As our plane banked steeply in preparation for our landing on the short runway of the Noi Bai airport, out _side Hanoi, Vietnam, I thought about all of the different people I had been on my many previous trips to Vietnam.
[
more... ]

My paternal grandfather was a worker at Bridge Company No5. [in the mid-1960s] He and his colleagues repaired the damage left by the American bombings. After the [Vietnam] war was over [in 1975], he and his co-workers were in charge of the maintenance of the bridge.
[
more... ]

Historian Duong Trung Quoc said in the Dan Tri Newspaper of 13 November, 2009, ‘The Long Bien Bridge is like the Eiffel tower spanning the Hong [Red] River. It is a beautiful symbol in the heart and mind of the Vietnamese.’
[
more... ]

I visited Thuong Minh Village and met an old shaman, Ban Van Kim. Mr Kim was 80 and the oldest Thủy person. He was small and spoke little Vietnamese. Mr Kim said the Thủy had migrated from China about 400 years ago because of war and disease.
[
more... ]

Professor Georges Condominas, who died on 17 July, was a world great of anthropology whom I am sure would have been farewelled in one of the deepest, remotest areas of the Central Highlands of Vietnam
[
more... ]

Doctor-artist Duong Cam Chuong is 101. At the age of eight or nine, when learning Chinese from his grandfather, he was chosen, noticed for his facility to write characters, which his classmates would trace.
[
more... ]